I am about to switch from what GoDaddy calls Ultimate Shared Hosting to a virtual private server which I've been busy building for several hours now. I have created a 100% identical files structure, backed up my database, created a database with the same name and am just about to restore the database into the newly created one on the dedicated server. I was wondering if anyone could help me with the pitfalls involved in this switch-over. I'm sure something's going to go wrong, even though the domain name on the old host and the new one are 100% identical. What's not identical will be the database server, just because when one purchases a dedicated (virtual) server the database is no longer kept on the host that it was kept on when using shared resources. No, from here on in the database is kept on my own (virtual) dedicated server. At the risk of being considered a pessimist I am almost certain this is going to cause problems when switching over. But if anyone happens to have advice that would make things easier I'd appreciate hearing your ideas on this.

I assume you are saying that the database is no longer on 'localhost' (or is now on 'localhost' when it wasn't before.?

It'll be fine... the most likely thing to get wrong is the GRANT command (assuming we are talking about MySQL) to create the user permissions for the database. Even then, you won't break anything Moodle just won't be able to access the database. Other than that, Moodle doesn't care where the database is.

Hi. Thanks for getting back so soon on this. Yes, it will be local host instead of what it was before. If I created a course with Moodle 2.2.3 (fortunately we are talking about a single course with 11 people in it and not hundreds for thousands of students!) and the database (with the same name) was sitting on another server (with a different name) are you saying there shouldn't be a problem? Also, the fact that the dedicated IP address of the new virtual dedicated server is not the same as the dedicated IP address of the previous server (I have a dedicated IP address since that's what you get when you get an SSL certificate--which will also soon be attached once again to the exact same domain name on the new virtual dedicated server plan, but with a different dedicated IP) should not be a problem either?

Maybe I don't understand how GD does moving services, but this might be your only hickup if domain of old host is moodle.somenet.net and the new one is also moodle.somenet.net and pointed to *same* IP address in DNS.

a.b.c => IP address and a.b.c => Same IP address is no change at all. The DNS settings need to be changed to point to the new IP. This can be a source of confusion but only because not many people get to deal with DNS day in day out.

Thanks for your reflections on this. I went ahead and did what I thought I was supposed to, and now things "almost" seem to work, but I get a message saying:

Fatal error: $CFG ->dataroot is not configured properly, directory does not exist or is not accessible! Exiting.

At first I thought it might be a permissions error, but I gave permission to Others (besides owner) of directory and that didn't fix it. Also, I think I am putting in the right info in $CFG-> dataroot = ... in the config.php file. At least that's what I was told to put in by the fine folks at GoDaddy for the absolute path of a virtual dedicated server plan:

'/var/www/vhosts/<domain name>/httpsdocs/moodle223cinfo/moodledata';

Now, what I did instead of inserting the domain name was to put in the IP address I am using for testing (before finding out all is well and then attaching it in the records area to the domain name I am still using on another (mission critical) host. Perhaps it's not possible to use an IP address instead of the domain name? Or maybe I'm using the wrong syntax? I know I'm getting close to the goal, since I've seen this message before when entering misinformation in the config.file, but this time I can't crack it. (I looked at the old config.php file, but the abolute hosting path is very differeent and in in the case of that site I'd always used the domain name from the start, never an IP address, which I think is important to use here instead of what will be my normal domain name. (I haven't modified the DNS entry, since I need the old site to stay up and running for another couple of days. Any (more) help would be appreciated. Regars, Gary

No problem at all... I assume you are accessing your site through a hostname rather than an IP address and you will be changing the entry in your DNS zonefile to point to the new IP? In which case, even less to worry about. There can be no broken links to patch up either.

It appears that you are doing what I did about two years ago - moved from a GoDaddy hosted environment to a GoDaddy Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) environment.

It was a little bit of a learning curve for me, because I had to brush up on UNIX commands. I was quite worried too. But the move went fine. I am still not an expert at these things, but my site has been running fine on the VDS for two to three years. The biggest difference is that on the VDS, you have to do almost everything yourself.

Do you have Moodle up and running on the VDS already? If so, your config.php file might be fine. In my config.php file, my references are to my domain name, not my IP address.

You should think about backing up your site from time to time. This includes your mySQL database, and the moodledata directory. You should also double check your permissions for your files.

I keep thinking like you do that something is bound to go wrong. I have had only one problem, and of course, GoDaddy (via check) first said it was something that I did. After persisting, it turned out to be something on the virtual server size, and they fixed the problem.

I have learned how to upgrade my Moodle in less than five minutes, so my "downtime" has been almost non-existent. I too run a small site (12 courses a year, maybe 150 students or so per year).

Many thanks to Rick and to everyone else who's given me advice above. Yes, I've just, in the dead of night, backed up my entire site on the shared hosting plan, backed up the MySql file, created a file structure on the new host in /httpdocs that is 100% the same as the original one under the shared hosting plan, created a database (yes, we are talking about localhost) that has the same name as the original one (at least the beginning part; the rest refers to the host that the database (along with hundreds/thousands of others under the shared Linux hosting arrangement) is sitting on), and am about to import the recently backed up original .sql file into the newly created database on the virtual dedicated server. I will then do a restore of my site onto my Moodle 2.2.3 site on the new private Linux server that is identical to what was under / on the old shared server. If you don't see any text-based screaming coming from me it means things worked fine. Otherwise.... Gulp.

Also, here is a suggestion that seems to work for me. I like to get Moodle up and running on its own, basically an empty shell. This makes sure that Moodle (2.3.3+, for example), works on its own.

Then, I import my old data into the new database, and then move my old moodledata data into the new moodledata directory (actually, I delete the new moodledata directory and un-tar the old). Then, just clean up permissions a little and you should be set.

So, if you don't succeed with your approach, you might try mine.

By the way, you seem much more technically competent that I was when I was first doing this, so I am confident that you will succeed. It appears that you might be usinig Plesk. I tried this and did not succeed. Then I tried cPanel and had better luck. But I am a novice at these things and I am sure it was something simple that I had to do to fix the problem.

Thanks for this tip. I may well try it; but I don't think that will fix my bad config.php line, which I'm really not quite sure how to fix. I remember similar problems on former installations, but this one is really hard to fix because it's more likely that I'm not plugging the right path information into the line. And the fine folks at GoDaddy have gently but firmly let me know what I'm on my own with this. Actually, they've given me good support I must say, but I have purchased an "unassisted" plan, and that means what it sounds like.

Above link does show paths one might need to know for configuration of apps that require full paths (such as Moodle).

Confusing to say the least ... if this control panel, then X paths, if that control panel, then Y paths, if no control panel, then Z paths.

This concerns me, however:

"And the fine folks at GoDaddy have gently but firmly let me know what I'm on my own with this"

Well, not necessarily true ... as it's GoDaddy that determined how the operating system is installed ... ie, what paths. So they should at least provide that information for customer, I would think. But that's what the 'help' site is supposed to do ... maybe. :|'spirit of sharing', Ken

I know that it would seem odd that Plesk would be problematic, but it was for me. It's been about 4 months, so I cannot exactly remember if my problem was exactly like yours. I do remember that Plesk presented some quirky problems, like yours. I was having success with another hosting company, TMDHosting, and they were providing me cPanel. So I thought, what the heck, for $5 more a month at GoDaddy, I would give cPanel a try. It worked! Don't know why. I guessed that you were using Plesk when you made reference to "httpdocs", which is what I observed Plesk doing. Plesk also setup group owners a little differently.

GoDaddy only goes so far with their help. If, for example, it has something to do with config.php, they will not help. TMDHosting was a little better with help, but they don't provide the same amount of memory as GoDaddy for the price, so I thought that I would stay with GoDaddy.

My site is at www.rjerz.com/moodle, and you will see that it is up and running. Once again, this is with cPanel.

So you might give it a try yourself before aborting goDaddy. Call them, upgrade to cPanel (even if it only for a month), reprovision your server, and start from scratch again.

If money is no object, you might want to try TMDHosting. My estimate was that they would cost me around $20 more each month for the same amount of memory. Or maybe others can suggest who they use.

Quite honestly, GoDaddy has been pretty good keeping my VDS alive and running. I have a current 2.3.3+ installation running at www.rjerz.com/moodle, and I have an older 1.9+ installation running at www.rjerz.com/moodle19, and a second "experimental" 2.3.3+ running at a second domain (same VDS) at www.rjerz.net/moodle (yes, .net). The moodle19 copy has all of my courses from my first three years with Moodle, and before I switched to Moodle 2.0. I use the second install at rjerz.net as my first place to go when upgrading. If my upgrade goes well on this installation, I then do the upgrade to my production site.

I have another experimental copy of 2.3.3+ running on TMDHosting (this is a low cost hosting plan, like $5 per month) at www.rjerz2.com/moodle. I couldn't move my current mySQL database to TMDHosting because it exceeds the maximum php file size for this hosting account. But, I can still experiment. I had a Virtural hosting account with TMDHosting, but canceled it when I got my new GoDaddy VDS running.

As you can see, I have multiple copies of Moodle installed for different reasons. This being said, I am really not an official network administrator or anything like that. I am simply a professor who wanted to get away from my university's Blackboard product.

Rather than fiddling around with the config.php file I decided to create another Moodle site from scratch, but when starting the install I get the folllowing error message (see attachment). I thought the system was telling me to get the moodledata directory outside the httpdocs directory, but that's not possible, since I am not allowed to create a directory in the parent of /httpdocs. Again, I am just starting out with this virtual dedicated server business and am in the middle of a steep learning curve. But it seems that I have done what I should here. But no joy yet. I'm sure the Moodle installer is trying to tell me something to put me out of my misery, but whatever it is it's "not computing" as we used to say in futuristic movies in the 50s-60s. Any help here would help, since I have no problem rebuilding the Moodle site. I just need to make sure something works.

You are perfectly correct. You cannot have the data directory inside the web directory. You musn't do that. I find it very hard to believe that (on a virtual host) you have no options other than to create folders inside the web served directory. Can't you create a new directory alongside 'httpdocs'?

Hi, yes, and I just did that; actually I created two moodledata files (with different names referred to properly in each config.php file of each separate installation) since I will eventually need to have two separate Moodle sites--when I manage to crack the path problem that is.... And once I do I will then start to tackle the real mountain ahead: finding and installing and getting a streaming video server to work to stream .flv. files to clients with a variety of OSs (Windows XP, 7, 8 and Mac OS). That was why I broke down and switched from Ultimate Shared Hosting at GoDaddy to virtual dedicated in the first place. But could I have imagined that getting the path question resolved would be such an issue ;-(

If you or others have any more tips let me know. One thing I was thinking of is that perhaps I must have a domain name in the path rather than a numerical IP address, which is what I've been plugging up till now while trying to do a fresh installation of Moodle (after creating a database on localhost) just to see what the problem is. But as I mentioned in a previous mail, that stalls too. ;-(

Hi everyone,the HotPot module for Moodle 2.x works fine, but it is now a 3rd-party module so if your site requires it, you will need to download and install it separately from the Moodle core code. Here's a link to the zip file:

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who's been following this saga with a happy ending (though it's not quite the grande finale yet). Special thanks to Nick and Rick on this, but to everyone, too. Yes, a few minutes after pressing the Install button I was up and running and now just have to do a bit of pruning and shearing to tie up loose ends. My 5+ MBype .sql back up file was gobbled up sans burps by the new system with no problem and I am about to import the site file I backed up at 6 a.m. this morning CET time, where I'm based. Nick also told me about the video-streaming capability built into Moodle 2.2.3 itself, which might make it unnecessary to install some fancy streaming server (I'm doing only file serving; not live. For live video I use the excellent, cost-effective Citrix product GoToMeeting for up to 25 partiipants and GoToWebinar for up to 99. That was NOT a paid announcement, by the way, just a report on a good, stable product.) Anyway, thanks to all for your support; frankly a few days ago, before writing, I thought I'd run into the perfect storm involving lack of ability/knowledge/training/time, etc. Regards, Gary

P.S.: Attached is a screen capture of part of the automatically generated config.php created when I pressed Install. Oddly moodledata seems to be in the wrong place (it was because of my reading of Moodle manuals that I placed mine under the /moodle directory rather than above it as was suggested in an earlier posting above). Anyway, I'm sure there are a few more tweaks to make to get the site running well enough to accept passengers, but I can already get in and create courses. Next step will be to restore the site. If you don't hear much from me about this in the next few days it means things work fine. I might be back for more guidance about video sreaming, but if, as Nick mentioned, the system itself should stream .FLV files or .MP4's converted via freeware to .FLVs that should be sufficient. Thanks again to all for our help.

In UNIX, I think the command is as follows, if you are in the moodle directory:

mv –i moodledata ../../moodledata

Then, edit your config.php file and change the dataroot. By the way, in your attached config.php file, the $CFG->dataroot location looks odd to me. I would have expected your commented out line to be the correct one.

Relative to videos, in addition to the links that I gave you in my other post, I thought that I would share with you the information that I share with my students about accessing my videos. This might help you think about how you want to do it. Click Here.

I just posted a message to Rick. I decided, since my Moodle site is so sparsely populated anyway, to just rebuild it from scratch. But, again, I am so new to this wonderful world of virtual dedicated servers (with totally different absolute paths to Moodle directories from what I knew and loved before with shared hosting at GoDaddy) that I'm getting stuck. I was stuck before trying to enter the right parameters into the config.php file and I'm stuck again trying to avoid the problem by creating a new Moodle site from scratch. Rick had an idea about sending you my config. php file. Well here it is for both of you to take a look at. Don't laugh to loud, please. I told you I'm new at this game. By the way, I checked the "critical paths" list of path information in GoDaddy, and what I have typed in here seems to be right. Or is the problem in both cases (that of my already existing Moodle site I wanted to change from where it is on the shared hosting plan to its new home on the virtual dedicated server and the new Moodle site I am trying to build from scratch, but with new data paths that are totally foreign to me) simply one of where the moodle data is sitting and where it should be?

STOP PRESS!!!!!! You won't believe this, but half-asleep after knocking my head against the wall for two days, I was leaving through the online help page that GoDaddy publishes and in tiny print it started talking about a "bundle of automated installations" that one gets with the VPS deal. Guess what: Moodle 2.3.2 is in the list and I am now installing it. [7 mins later] It is installed. I am very sorry to have dragged you into the curious enterprise of reinventing the wheel when there was a kit with a wheel in it right outside the cave. Now, if people aren't too p....sed off could someone give me some tips about how to get video streaming up and running on a CentOS 6.3 virtual dedicated server. (No, there is no installation package for that one!)

Well, this is good news. You will see that this is one of my suggestions to you in my long reply. Eventually, you will need to know how to upgrade your Moodle installation. You should also look at what the auto-install did, and learn from it. For example, look at the config.php file. Also, see where it put the moodledata directory, and the "rights" that it established.

You said that you thought you needed two installations. You can try installing the second one yourself (the auto-installer may not be able to do more than one). Is your second Moodle going to be in the same domain, or in another?

Well, you still have a few things to learn. Isn't it fun! Really? You have come a long way already.

You can see some of my comments about video in my other post (it might be below).

I will try to give you some thoughts to this post and to you post above. These are not necessarily in any particular order.

1) Your move from a hosted account to a virtual dedicated server does involve a learning curve, one whose steepness depends on your own abilities coming into this. I am not an expert at these things, so I typically allow a month to learning these things.

2) What tools are you using: SSH, FTP, the file management system on your VDS? I have found that knowing SSH is very helpful. If you know SSH, I might be able to give you some guidance using it. If not, it can still be done, but it will be a little more difficult.

3) Don't you have a domain? I saw the ip-188.121.. in your file. You will notice in my config.php that it is much simpler with the domain name. Eventually, you will want to use the domain name anyway, so why not start with it.

4) If everything is working well, Moodle will create the config.php file for you. You should not need to touch this file initially. I only edit mine to make a change to ignoring my ssl certificate.

5) I forget, does Plesk have an install routine for Moodle? cPanel does. I don't use these anymore myself. However, you might try it just to see that Plesk can indeed install Moodle for you. It will probably be an earlier version of Moodle (these auto installers tend to lag a bit), but it will probably be version 2.something. Once you have a copy of Moodle working, you can use it as a model for your own install. Or you might keep it and upgrade it to the latest version. I assume on you GoDaddy hosted account, you were using Moodle from the auto-install method.

6) Yes, "moodledata" needs to be outside of hpptdocs, not inside it. Actually, when I had a GoDaddy hosted account and installed Moodle with their one-button install, it put moodledata inside the website directory. I picked up a book on Moodle and learned that it should be outside the web folder, so I moved it myself. On your VDS, the Moodle installer will always suggest its proper place, but you must have "rights" to create it, which you should if you are doing this logged in as the owner of your domain.

7) I am recalling the Plesk did some odd things with group ownerships. I think you want the owner and the group to be the same (in my case, rjerzcom). Plesk seemed to make these different, which is why I might not have had luck with it. cPanel kept these the same.

8) There is a video somewhere of a person showing how to install Moodle. I saw it once, thought it was pretty good, but I can't remember where. It might be on YouTube.

9) I took note of your "video" needs. I also recall that you have a small site. I make extensive use of videos in my courses, but I do not have a streaming video server. Here is an example of what I am doing to deliver my videos to students. If you play a video, as long as you are on a DSL or better Internet connection, the video should stream for you. I am using a very low cost solution. I don't know if any of this is of interest to you, but I thought that I would mention it to you. Below are two different approaches.

9a) Click here to view a single video from your browser, it should stream.

9b) Click here to view my current course videos, from my video player. Try clicking the "All" button, you might be surprised to see all my videos. Here is one more example that you should enjoy (Slightly outdated, however. Making this current is my winter break project.)

10) Relative to videos, you can also find my course videos on iTunes. I podcast these, and I also use Moodle's RSS feature to provide another way for students to access these. All my videos are now MP4s, not FLVs. I used to do FLV but no longer need to. Again, I do not use a streaming server to deliver these.

Well, I have given you probably more information that you expected. Maybe my numbered list will make it easier to address any specific thing that I said. It appears that Ken, Howard, and maybe some other folks are also doing a good job helping you.

If you are enjoying some of this, you probably have the right mentality to be successful. If all of this seems to be a big pain in the butt, you might have to consider other approaches (such as letting TMDHosting, or some other company host your Moodle).

Thanks for all of this information. No amount is ever enough. Also, thanks for confirming what some other people are saying: namely, that I don't really have to bother with installing a video streaming server on my VDS if all I need to do is protect copyrighted video files from being downloaded to people's harddisks. That's very good news. No, I don't know SSH, though for a couple of months I played around with early versions of command-line installs of Slackware, and eventually I got the idea. Unfortunately, that was many years ago, and the many of my neurons have either changed address or gone missing.

What I find a little odd in this automated installation (apart from the funny place it decided to stick moodledata) is the page that comes up with all the plugins that need to be installed, starting with hotpot. I have never seen anything like this before with a clean installation. The automated 1.9.19 (yes, the fine folks at GoDaddy don't like to jump into providing automated installs of latest versions of Moodle before making real sure much earlier ones work perfectly!) never gave me a page of 20 things to check, update or whatever. Another odd thing is that though I have a list of themes (I wanted to use Afterburner with a different logo) when I click on a partiular theme and then click on Save, nothing seems to happen. That's not comforting. What's also not comforting is that the backup I made of what I thought was my entire site (at least that's the radio button I clicked) and though the restore of the backup seems to be accepted by the system, I see no changes whatsoever. All of the above is more than a bit unnerving, and makes me wonder if something very wrong might not be going on. I can create new courses, however. And I can add users to the new courses. (I tried this.) So it isn't like I have nothing, but I can't really use what I have unless I accept redoing my entire previous site manually and accepting a bare-bones theme. Maybe the problem is minor (like the previous config.php that probably didn't work because of syntax problems), but something is certainly wrong. What I'm going to try and do in a moment is to copy the config.php file that the automated install generated for this new clean(ish) version of Moodle 2.2.3, make the single necessary change in subdirectory name so that my old moodle site will possibibly fire up, create and populate a database for that site and see what happens. At least the automated install has told me what parameters to put into a config.php file for the VDS! (I'd have preferred a bit more, but whatdaya want for free, right?)

As for the question of just using my domain name right from the start instead of this odd IP address in my CFG lines in config.php, the reason I am not ready to switch is that I have a live site with precisely the domain name I will want to use running with real live students working on it. It's only at the end of my course in a week or so that I will kill the shared hosting plan and go into the DNS records area of my new VDS and attach the old domain name (i.e. what students type to get to the currently live site) to my new IP address on the VDS.

I know I'm getting real real close, since slight changes in the database info are showing up as slight changes in error messages. What is not 100% clear now is what parameters I should have plugged into the database-related CFG lines in the attached document. I think I'm the dbuser "admin" and I think that the other parameters related to the database are correct, but I'm not 100% sure. For example, I know that 3306 is the right port setting, but I'm not sure if I should insert this or just insert 'localhost'. If I crack this I think I'm home free. I have the exact same file structure as I did on my previous site and I successfully important the 5+ MByte database as an .sql import. Things went without a hitch, except for this hopefully minor database connection problem. The message, by the way, that I get is:

I have to jump in here and say that if people are viewing video material over the web then they are downloading it to their hard disks. There's nothing you can do to stop them saving or taking a copy. Even a streaming server (a much misunderstood beast) won't help you with that.

You have no control over the client end so there's nothing you can do about it.

Another aside... I'm not a big fan of these automated installers. It may seem easier at the time but there are two big problems - 1. You have no idea what it is doing so you are trusting it to work, trusting it with your data, and trusting that it will upgrade in the future 2. we don't know either so you are unlikely to get much useful help when it all goes wrong.

I am aware that I'm sounding horribly negative but this is all bitter experience from these forums. What you wanted to do should have been, from your initial post, dead easy. But, a VPS assumes a bit more 'server administrator' skill and there's not really any way around that.

I am glad to see you giving Gary some very good advice, and you will see me providing many of the same thoughts.

I am not a big fan of the automated installers either, now that I know how to do it myself. However, sometimes these auto installers can help you see at least one way that Moodle can be installed, so they often act as good educational training. As you implied, a raw install of Moodle is really not that complex (once you know how, and your server is "standard"). It can be as simple as two steps 1) create a database, 2) install Moodle and let its script take care of everything. Well, afterwards, there is always some fine-tuning.

Yep, a VPS or VDS does assume more "server administrator" skill. Actually GoDaddy, for me, had never led me to believe otherwise. And they are pretty good at reinforcing this idea.

Thanks for this advice. Sure, I know it's impossible to stop people from getting the video somehow (even if it's nothing more sophisticated than by taking out a HandyCam and videoing the screen), but I promised I'd not let (most) people right-click and Save target to disk. So I've at least got to deliver on that. Thanks Rick for those SSH commands. I have PUTTY up and running fine on my machine and have actually stopped and started the database server. My problem now is to figure out how to deal with that database error. I suspect it's nothing very sophisticated. I now understand the path information more or less and know where things are. I'll just keep going and eventually I'm sure I'll get it right. I remember seeing this sort of message before. one little thing about the dbname entry: if I'm running it on local host is the entry 'localhost' or 'localhost: 3306" assuming the port setting of the database server is 3306? Regards to all who have been helping out here.

I have to disagree with you. The correct response is to laugh a lot and point out to them why it is a stupid request. Here's the thing - if the video materials are of any value then they will be on Youtube within 24 hours and you will look stupid. If they have no value, then you are all wasting your time anyway. Sorry to be brutal but this is silly.

If the database server is on the same machine as the web server the database host is 'localhost'. 3306 is the default port and you can forget about it. Of course, you still need to do the 'GRANT' on the database to allow access to the databse.

My response to the the request of we have to find a way to prevent people from downloading our content was "If I found a way to do that I'd have sold it to the MPAA and RIAA by mow and be lying on a chair in the Grand Caymans for the winter."

They are simply asking for the impossible. Copy protection has never EVER worked in the recorded history of the computing industry, let alone in the era of reasonably-fast internet.

Yep, this brings us back to the issue of protecting copyright in the age of computers and the Internet.

Gary wanted to protect against easy (right-click) downloads of video. I wonder if his administration wants to protect against easy (right-click) downloads if images, or easy (drag through text, copy/paste) download of text?

There are many who are trying to find ways to "secure" content (and make money from it to relax in the Grand Caymans). These solutions somewhat naturally cause problems to some students, and then moodle administrators. The more you lock-down content, the more problems you will create for yourself. Furthermore, students will figure out a way around these things.

Derek made me wonder about why my videos have not found their way to YouTube. I have found that for videos to work well, having redundant delivery methods helps. I deliver my videos internally with a Flash player on Moodle, I also deliver them as podcasts on iTunes, as links in Moodle's RSS feed, and as downloadable files via a browser's approach to reading the RSS feed. Students can watch videos on their computer or mobile device. With so many ways available to students, I seldom get a complaint. So students have not found a need to move these to YouTube. Yes, students can download these to their computers, but it allows them to do their work and not complain to me. I tell them not to try to sell my videos because they are copyrighted. This is the best that I can do. For externally copyrighted videos, I don't put these on iTunes, and I remind students that these are copyrighted.

Anyone who thinks that they can prevent someone from copying something on a computer screen doesn't understand computer technology. Likewise, anyone who thinks that they can prevent written material from being copied doesn't understand copy machines and cameras.

Having said all of this, I think Gary's approach to showing some sensitivity to this issue is about the best he can do.

If someone could make money out of your videos they would be away with them. If there was some benefit to them they would put them on YouTube. There isn't, so it doesn't matter and you have made things better for your students as a result. You might want to think if putting them on YouTube yourself would do any harm.

If the *only* thing you have to offer is some videos (I don't mean you - I mean in general) and no other benefits from the Moodle course then you might as well save yourself some bother and stick them in the post of DVDs.

My concern is that, as an administrator, it is a requirement to make videos (or other materials or even quiz questions) secure. When you don't, because you can't, saying you could becomes a career-limiting decision.

Many thanks for your reflections on this. I am at a conference in Belgium right now and am writing from my hotel room at 6:29 a.m. I will be sure and mention this over a Belgian beer this afternoon at lunch, though I will still try and make it look like I'm trying to do what I can (i.e. the impossible) protection-wise.

I wanted everyone following the initial part of the saga to know that when I went back to the automated installer and removed the subdirectory I'd originally wanted to install Moodle 2.2.3 into (since I'd originally wanted several encapsulated Moodle installations running side by side) I stopped getting those odd messages about hotpot not being there and databases not found. In other words the install went 100% smoothly as long as I installed into what the installer saw as "domain name/" (i.e. .../httpdocs). Yippie! But I still have a question (sorry): since on my original site I had a setup with parallel installations of Moodle 2.2.3, I assume that links to resources contain path information about where those resources were sitting, and they are all wrong for the new installation. Maybe I'm mistaken, and I can try and check to see (unless this information is now encrypted--it wasn't in 1.9.16). In that case, since I only have one course with only 11 people in it and with all the original course resources sitting in Dropbox I can always simply sit down and recreate it in a couple hours. But it's the principle of the thing that interests me. In other words: I have a backup of the .sql file, an .mbz backup of the original course and a subdirectory with all files mirrored exactly the way they were on the original 2.2.3 install. The only difference now is which subdirectory the latter are sitting in and the fact that I now have a numerical IP address rather than the original domain name (since I am still in setup mode and the other live site has to stay running until the end of the conference since I'm demoing it at present). Another question: perhaps it would be wise once I don't need to run things from my live site to simply shut it down, go into the GoDaddy DNS Manager panel and attach the new IP address to the old domain name before continuing. In fact, if I did this it would probably be a good idea now that I can get the automated installer to give me what I want to do the reinstall on the my new VDS only after attaching the new dedicated IP address to my domain name?

Thanks again to all for making me a little more savvy about "protecting" videos. There is also always the problem of some nasty person putting a gun to a registered user's head and saying: "Hey, you, click on that link there and play that video for me. Or else...."

Quite honestly, it is now a little difficult for me know know exactly where you are. How many databases do you think that you have? One? And how many "moodledata" directories do you have? One?

If you now have one clean install, with nothing in it, I think that it could be safe to try to import your old course. I am not sure if it will work because there might be an upgrade order to doing this (that I cannot recall), but I don't think you can do too much harm, especially now that you might know how to recreate everything. Maybe Howard or others can give you other information about this.

Even if you succeed importing a 1.9 course into 2.3, make sure to check out everything before you use it.

The IP/Domain swap should be pretty straight forward, and GoDaddy has actually helped by phone with this, since domain management is not in your VDS. When you are ready to do this, phone GoDaddy and have them walk you through it, or have them hit the keystrokes.

Thanks for getting back to me. I have decided to just rebuild my single course in the clean Moodle 2.2.3 install I did. I have one database that the automated install created (automatically given the name moodle6, just to give you an idea of how much trouble I was having getting the car to start!). My question now is related to the video streaming feature we talked some time back that is built right into the Moodle platform. I uploaded an .FLV file to a resources directory in my Moodle 2.2.3 and created an "external" URL link in the Add Resource area when in editing mode. And I do indeed see the video. But at least when using UBUNTU to open Moodle, I am asked to download to my harddisk! Which is not at all what I wanted; what I wanted was to have a window open with no way for the user to download the file. I thought that's what the video streaming feature of Moodle itself would get me; maybe I was wrong. I realize, as Howard pointed out earlier, that there is no way I can make sure someone doesn't do a video of the screen or something more sophisticated to get the contents of the video, but I did promise my people that at least there would be no "Click here to download" button that pops up. Any ideas as to what I'm doing "wrong" here? I tried to upload the file using the File Picker, but all I got there was a little spinning icon to show that was happening, but I let it go for hours, but at the end of those hours I saw no file in the files area. My PHP setting should allow files of 120MBytes in size be uploaded, and the file in question was only 110MBytes. Or maybe there is somewhere else besides the php5.ini in my Moodle setup that I should tell my virtual dedicated server to allow bigger files be uploaded. Maybe it's like that that I need to do the streaming and not by creating an "external" URL pointing to the same VDS where boh the Moodle 2.2.3 site is installed and all resources (in an appropriate subdirectory on the same server). Any help will be appreciated as usual. I am getting really close now I feel. And am about to use the materials in my Dropbox account to recreate the course and re-add the 11 people who will be continuing on.

Finally, I have used the chat facility of Godaddy that one gets with a VDS. The people there are highly competent, by the way, and willing to teach newbies whatever they want to be taught. I've used it a couple of times and it's a very efficient way to get help.

Just an update re my previous post and to avoid your having to figure out what's going on. I fixed my problem and the streaming this time is happening the way I want it to. No download possibility within the free Flowplayer that is now popping up with each resource. I think I had the right link but the wrong info in the HTML behind the link so I just went into the HTML editor and fixed the directory reference (that was out of sync with the link due to updating one but not the other). All is now well. This is what I wanted Moodle to do for me. And it is.

OK, I have the videos running properly and got the MySQL database imported correctly into the new site on the new server with no hiccups; the only thing that is giving me trouble now it the import of a 0.9 Gig upload of one of the the two courses I'd like to upload. I am getting a message saying that max_post_size limite directive in php.ini might be wrong. Well, I went into both php5.ini and /etc/php.ini via vi and upped the max_post_size to 2000M. But still I get this message and cannot import my unzipped course. Given the fact that I have all course materials I could simply (and I might just do this) rebuild the course manually. But it would be nice to know what the heck's going on. Have you ever run into this problem? Just to be sure I asked the fine folks at GoDaddy if they or CentOS 6.3 put a cap on file sizes (0.9 Gig being pretty big), but they say no they don't. And I assume Moodle 2.2.3 doesn't as long as /etc php.ini and php.5.ini are not artificially limiting size. Again, help would be appreciated just in case I ever have to restore a much larger set of courses. By the way, might it be an idea to restore not just the course, but rather the entire moodle site from a large downloaded backup file? Regards, Gary

In php.ini, change upload_max_filesize to 2000M, and maybe max_execution_time to 600.

Then, you may also need to reboot your server (from your control panel) so that these changes take effect.

You might have global php.ini file and a user php.ini file. I am not sure which one is controlling your Moodle install.

You might not have an info.php file in your website root, so I am attaching mine for you to move there. If you put this in your root, then type www.yourdomain.com/info.php, it will report what your server sees. You can then verify that your changes are correct. It is suggested good practice not to keep this info.php alive on your server.

You might also want to reduce the filesize limits once you do your moves so that you don't accidentally allow students to upload 1GB files to your Moodle.

Not being a Moodle administrator, I hope that I am on target with my advice. Others might be able to jump in and clarify what I am it saying.

I do site backups because my entire site is not that big. My moodledata file is now 1.3GB. This is after around 500 students, 20 courses, and 1 1/2 years of running 2.0.

Many thanks for your express reply! I will try doing all of this. I did reboot Apache, but maybe that isn't enough. I will also stick the file in and see what comes out. Will let you know. Regards, Gary

You cannot protect copyrighted videos, or for that matter any content seen on a computer screen from being copied to one's computer. Anyone with enough "computer smarts" and the right software can do it.

I learned UNIX commands around 1980 and did not use them much in the last 30 years. But it came back to me now that I manage my own VDS. The UNIX commands can make life much easier, so when you find time, brush up on these. I will give you a list of my most often used commands below. Nothing elaborate, just some of my own notes in a Word file. By the way, I use the free Putty application for SSH.

You should be able to change the theme in your new install. You do this in Site|Administration|Appearance|Themes|Themes Selector|Use Theme.

Are you saying that the "restore" did not bring over any of your existing courses? Do you still have your old Moodle 1.9 running? I believe that the upgrade to 2.3.+ needs to follow a certain path, such as first, upgrade 1.9 to the latest 1.9 version, then upgrade to 2.3. Quite honestly, when I moved to Moodle 2.+, I started mostly from scratch. I restored my old, and latest versions of my 1.9 courses into 2.0+, and then had to fix a number of things, such as the quizzes. Getting 2.+ into shape took about a month, but it was extremely well worth it. I would never want to go back to 1.9.

By the way, I don't think your problems are config.php related. They are more likely due to: 1) some corruption in the install (do an upgrade yourself), 2) the mySQL database, or 3) something odd about moodledata data. At this point, are you running the install from GoDaddy? Did you try yet to reinstall your mySQL data? Have you tried to move over your old moodledata data? Make sure to make a copy of config.php before you modify it, so that you can always go back to what worked(?). Also, don't be surprised at the small size of config.php. If you look back at mine, you will see that it really is not that elaborate. Yes, many more things can be added to it, but for your small site, you probably will not need to touch it.

Yes, swapping the domain names is a little tricky. Actually, this is something that GoDaddy has helped me do via voice support. You actually re-point the domain name to your new IP address. Try not to kill your hosted plan until your new system is running. In fact, even when you re-point the domain name, you might be able to access your hosted site via its IP address. On your new VDS, you have all kinds of flexibility. What I did was to install a copy of Moodle 1.9 (this was my www.rjerz.com/moodle19 link I gave to you), and then I moved my old hosted Moodle to it. This way, I can always access my old Moodle 1.9 courses. So far, this works.

It was over a year ago that I upgraded to Moodle 2.+. As I recall, I started with a clean install of Moodle 2.+, restored four of my old courses to it, and continued from there. I do not recall trying to restore my "moodledata" data. I think that I wanted a fresh mooodledata directory, knowing that Moodle 2 had a whole new database scheme. I also moved from the standard theme to Formal White.

When I installed Moodle 2.3.2 in the root of what the virtual dedicated server at Godaddy calls /site1 (i.e. the directory created when attaching a domain to the dedicated IP address of the server) things work perfectly now. But what I can't seem to figure out fot he life of me is why a second domain that I have associated with the same IP address and whose directories are found in /site2 (automatically created when associating the second domain I added with the server's dedicated IP address) in which I did an automated install, just like I did into /site1, doesn't work and gives me a 500 error when I tray and go to the home page of my Web site. I have checked (or think I have) to make sure the files and settings for /site2 containing the directories and files for my second domain with a second Moodle 2.3.2 installation are all OK, and everything looks good. However, I still get the 500 Apache error. Any ideas why this is occurring? By the way, when I first accepted the default, which was to allow the automated installation for /site1 one install into /site1/moodle the result was no good; I had the intuition that I should set the directory for / (i.e. site1), at which point things went smoothly. Any pointers to get my second domain with a second Moodle installation up and running would be appreciated.

This, by the way, is what I see when I go into the error logs on the server:

The DNS is right I'm sure; so are the nameservers I chose. I know this because when I put a simple index.html in /site2 I see it just fine. The only difference I can see between the Moodle site that works in /site1 and the one that doesn't in /site2 (corresponding to a second domain I attached to the same IP address as the domain corresponding to /site1) is that /site1 has an SSL certificate associated with it, so one goes to it with https://, while the domain on /site2 is straight http://. Everything else looks the same. And yet I get no Moodle home page for /site2, just an Apache error message. Here is the message:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, virtuellementla@gmail.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Apache Server at gurq.net Port 80Again, I have no problem with an identical installation on a different domain attached to the same dedicated IP address. Odd, no?

So, I stared at the error message I'd included in my previous posting for more than 10 seconds this time and realized at the 11th second I realized the message was actually trying to say something meaninful, but that I was not paying enough attention to what it was trying to say to me. So I went to the PHP memory settings tab in Plesk and saw that for some reason I'd set the PHP memory for the Moodle installation on /site1 to hog all available memory, meaning that the installation on /site2 (for the other domain) was choking to death. That's why I had no problem going to http://gurq.net when I put a simple index.html in, but did when trying to run the script that couldn't run for lack of resources. I have now set the PHP memory setting tab to Default for both domains and, as if by magic, both work. Hope the dumb thing I did by fiddling at one point with PHP memory setting will help any others reading these words with their issues. So consider the case closed. For the moment that is.... Regards

Rick, with 2GBytes at my disposal on the VDS I have with GoDaddy what would your recommendation be as far as setting PHP memory size is concerned. I read in Moodle that the default is 128M, and that's what's showing when I look at PHP performance in my gurq.net site. (Which now works!) But I have the feeling it's a bit sluggish, and if I have 2GBytes at my disposal with no body but me using them....

Without more information concerning these other 'domains', it's impossible to assist you. So what is the domain associated with the files that appear to be in the 'site1' directory? 'site2' directory? And do each of those sites use a different DB and data directory?

Rick, I think permissions are right, since I didn't touch anything after using the auto-install facility of Plesk to install Moodle in /site2. Ken, as far as your question about domains is concerned, /site1 is the root directory for virtuellement-la.net, which works perfectly (but only when I used the auto-install facility of Plesk to install into / instead of /moodle). And the domain associated with /site2 is gurq.net. Yes, each of the sites uses a different DB and data directory, automatically created when I did the installs. Again, what's weird is that virtuellement-la.net, with the SSL certificate associated with it, works just fine. Just try it and see: https://virtuellement-la.net. Again, when I put a basic index.html in /site2 there's no problem getting to the home page of gurq.net. As I read more and more in the manual about Plesk 11 I see that there is what appears to be a sort of technical tug of war betwee settings in Plesk and settings via GoDaddy's own DNS zone interface. In fact, at one point I contacted GoDaddy and asked them which I should use to set, say, nameservers. The answer: "No, no, don't use Plesk; use our interface for this." This I found to be sort of a weird answer, since they are the ones who give me access to the Plesk 11 manual that says specifically to do this and most other things via Plesk. Anyway, thanks to both of you guys for trying to resolve this mystery. I'm sure it will be soon, and since I now have my Moodle site at virtuellement-la.net up and running as my mission-critical site, serving streaming video, I can turn my attention in a more relaxed manner to the gurq.net Moodle problem.

By the way, since you are using an SSL, you might consider using it for "logins" only. In the past, I have had some problems using it for the entire site. Furthermore, it is the passwords that need encryption.

In Moodle, go to site administration|Security|HTTP Security|Use HTTPS for login = YES.

The following error message from the error log might help diagnose the problem, which seems to be a memory problem. Again, it doesn't explain why one Moodle site with one domain works and the same type of Moodle site in the same directory and with the same settings with another domain doesn't, but it's a start, and i am now fiddling with PHP memory settings to see if I can get anywhere: